Disc drives are data storage devices used to store and retrieve digital user data in a fast and efficient manner. A typical disc drive stores data on a number of magnetic recording discs which are rotated at a constant high speed. An actuator controllably moves a corresponding number of data transducing heads to access data stored in tracks defined on the disc surfaces.
Servo data are written to the discs during disc drive manufacturing to provide head positional information to a closed loop servo control circuit. The servo data are used by the servo control circuit to maintain a selected head over a selected track in a track following operation, and to move a selected head from an initial track to a different, destination track during a seek operation.
Since data storage devices are generally configured to transfer user data during track following operations, minimizing the time spent seeking to different tracks will generally tend to improve overall data transfer rates.
While a variety of seek strategies have been found operable, with continued demand for data storage devices with higher data storage capacities and better performance, there remains a continued need for improvements in the manner in which seeks are carried out in a data storage device. More generally, there remains a continued need for improvements in the art to control the movement of any number of different types of control objects, including actuators in data storage devices, from an initial position to a destination position.